Modeling the anisotropic self-assembly of spherical polymer-grafted nanoparticles

Victor Pryamtisyn, Venkat Ganesan, Athanassios Z. Panagiotopoulos, Hongjun Liu, Sanat K. Kumar

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

116 Scopus citations

Abstract

Recent experimental results demonstrated that polymer grafted nanoparticles in solvents display self-assembly behavior similar to the microphase separation of block copolymers and other amphiphiles. We present a mean-field theory and complementary computer simulations to shed light on the parametric underpinnings of the experimental observations. Our theory suggests that such self-assembled structures occur most readily when the nanoparticle size is comparable to the radius of gyration of the polymer brush chains. Much smaller particle sizes are predicted to yield uniform particle dispersions, while larger particles are expected to agglomerate due to phase separation from the solvent. Selected aspects of our theoretical predictions are corroborated by computer simulations.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number221102
JournalJournal of Chemical Physics
Volume131
Issue number22
DOIs
StatePublished - 2009

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Physics and Astronomy
  • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry

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